Dear Editor,
Your BOCC report last week included statements from the County Board of Health (i.e. the Commissioners) indicating that the County Health Director believes covid vaccines are dangerous and that the County no longer will provide those vaccines. Doing so relinquishes $58,000 funding that otherwise goes to vaccination programs. These decisions harm the public health, and the Commissioners must reconsider.
Some background. Shortly after assuming office, the new Commission dissolved the established County Board of Health and arrogated unto themselves that role. While State statute allows the Commission to function as Health Board in small counties, our commissioners violated established County Health Board bylaws in the process, and they deprive themselves of expert health advice.
There is overwhelming evidence that the covid vaccines are safe and effective. (See CDC links in last week’s edition and also NIH, 2023, and Memorial Sloan Kettering, 2023, for overviews.) Several hundred people availed themselves of covid vaccines at our County Health clinics in the past three years. There is no doubt those vaccines saved lives and reduced suffering. CDC and FDA anticipate an updated bivalent vaccine will be available in September. That vaccine provides a better match to new strains of covid now in circulation. It is the duty of our Public Health Department to provide such safeguards to those among us who wish to protect their own health and the health of the community. Covid remains a dangerous threat.
Very likely health authorities will recommend covid vaccination routinely on a seasonal basis, like the influenza vaccination, as new variants of both of those viruses emerge from year to year. What precludes our County Health Department from offering the covid vaccine along with influenza vax (and thereby also accruing significant state and federal funding)? Or has our County Health Board (i.e. the Commissioners) decided that we shouldn’t have the influenza vaccine either?
Dr. Bob Dorsett
Meeker
References:
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute. 2023. Updated (bivalent) covid vaccine. https://www.mskcc.org/coronavirus/new-bivalent-omicron-covid-19-boosters-effectiveness-safety-and-other-important-information
National Institutes of Health. 2023. Bivalent boosters offer better protection. https://covid19.nih.gov/news-and-stories/bivalent-boosters-offer-better-protection-against-omicron
